Friday, May 17, 2013

We already have reported how New York federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has been under furious criticism of late from prominent lawyers, including famed San Francisco-based attorney John Keker, for trying to mount a “show trial” in New York to help Chevron evade its $19 billion liability in Ecuador for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest.

Never one to mince words, Keker publicly accused Chevron of trying to drown Judge Kaplan’s court in “chicken shit” discovery motions and said, “I’ve never seen a judge treat an oil company… like a widow or orphan. Everything they [Chevron] want, they get.” Read the extraordinary article from the San Francisco legal newspaper, where Keker recounts what he calls Kaplan’s “implacable hostility” toward his client Steven Donziger, a longtime lawyer for the rainforest communities in Ecuador and the main target of a vicious Chevron retaliation campaign.

Lately, there is evidence that Judge Kaplan is going even more off the rails in what appears to be an increasingly personal crusade to destroy the case of the Ecuadorians.

Judge Kaplan is now routinely entertaining Chevron motions to deny the Ecuadorians and Donziger the right to know the identities of witnesses the oil giant plans to use against them. See this motion Chevron filed today. Kaplan already has granted Chevron’s request with respect to two “secret” witnesses; Chevron’s latest motion seeks the same status for a third.

A well-known Texas law firm is now joining Keker in calling out Judge Kaplan for acts that indigenous leaders in Ecuador have characterized as xenophobic, arrogant, and racist. See this article for a summary of how Judge Kaplan has insulted the Ecuadorians from the bench.

Craig Smyser, of Smyser Kaplan & Veselka in Houston filed a powerful motion (available here) in response to Chevron’s extraordinary request to hide its witnesses from the accused. (Smyser represents two Ecuadorians who are part of the class that won the judgment, Hugo Camacho and Javier Piaguaje.)

Smyser writes:

“Chevron files motions to conceal identities of accusers that would be right at home in the Spanish Inquisition or the Star Chamber, confident that the Court will grant the motions every time… The motion is offensive to basic principles of U.S. law … that permit an accused to confront his accuser. Only totalitarian and repressive regimes permit, especially in a civil context such as this, an accuser to hide his or her name from the accused.”

Chevron is trying to claim the secret affiant might be subject to reprisals in Ecuador, but Smyser pointed out correctly that Chevron has presented not a shred of evidence to support its claim. In fact, nobody from Chevron involved in the 19-year case – including hundreds of people from Chevron’s 2,000-person legal team and 60 law firms – has ever reported being harmed by anybody in Ecuador, a nation that enjoys warm diplomatic relations with the U.S. and is a mecca for U.S. tourists visiting Quito (a UNESCO world heritage site) and the Galapagos.

Most of Quito is far safer than parts of New York City, where Judge Kaplan lives. That’s especially true when you work for Chevron and get to travel abroad with beefy security dudes at your side. Just last week Chevron officials, some from the U.S., held a large press event in Quito to discuss the company’s view of the case. All apparently got out alive.

In fact, Chevron conducted a hotly-contested eight-year trial in its preferred forum of Ecuador -- and continues to do battle on appeal there -- without being able to cite a single incident of harm needed to justify such an extraordinary request. Dozens of Chevron lawyers and advisors, many from the U.S., participated in the trial.

The irony is telling. Those who really have been, and continue to be, under threat are the Ecuadorians and Donziger. They have been subject to death threats, espionage, and defamatory attacks by the oil giant and its “investigators” at Kroll and generally labor under a cloud of hostility created by Chevron’s goon squad. Donziger himself was a victim of a Chevron espionage campaign in Manhattan.

Chevron’s sudden use of “secret” witnesses is an old trick used by lawyers at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher to create the optical illusion that the human rights abuser in this case (Chevron) is actually under “threat” from its victims, the indigenous communities who have seen their cultures decimated by the company’s pollution. (See here for a summary of the evidence used to find Chevron liable, and here for a video about the case.)

The lawyers on Gibson Dunn’s dream team, led by the ethically-challenged Randy Mastro and Andrea Neumann (both have been sanctioned for their work on behalf of Chevron – see here and here), pulled the same “secret witness” stunt in another case in Florida. That was before the firm quickly withdrew its motion for the court to hear secret testimony when it was clear the maneuver was going to backfire. (Read this rather shocking and extensive legal brief for details of how Gibson Dunn paid secret witnesses to present false testimony in court on behalf of the Dole company.)

Smyser’s criticism of Judge Kaplan should not be taken lightly. He and two partners founded their boutique litigation firm as refugees from the prominent Houston corporate firms of Vinson & Elkins and Baker Botts. Smyser has been recognized repeatedly as one of the top litigators in Texas and has a roster of prominent clients.

Two weeks ago, Keker – a decorated former Marine who knows a thing or two about courage -- asserted in a brief that Judge Kaplan has let the New York case “degenerate into a Dickensian farce” where “Chevron is using its limitless resources to crush defendants and win this case through might rather than merit.”

Keker has moved to withdraw from the case because Donziger cannot pay his fees. Donziger recently filed a notice of appearance and is prepared to defend himself alone against Chevron’s army (114 lawyers at Gibson Dunn work on the case), although he has very little trial experience.

Chevron is suing Donziger for roughly $60 billion; Donziger lives in a two-bedroom apartment with his family.

It is also obvious that Judge Kaplan does not want the truth about Chevron to come out in his courtroom. He already has ruled that Donziger cannot use as evidence the extensive scientific evidence of Chevron’s contamination in Ecuador that the court there relied when finding the company liable. This essentially neuters Donziger’s ability to defend himself from Chevron’s preposterous claim that he was pursuing “sham litigation” in Ecuador.

Judge Kaplan also has signaled he will deny Donziger the right to pursue counterclaims against Chevron that provide a chilling picture of the company’s crimes, fraud, espionage, and bribery in Ecuador. Donziger’s counterclaims against Chevron are not what Judge Kaplan wants in his hoped-for script.

Chevron’s public relations flaks have been pretty open about the company’s strategy to evade justice by “demonizing” Donziger, as shown in a 2009 email from Chris Gidez, the company’s longtime press representative from Hill & Knowlton. (We will have more on that soon.) Copied on the Gidez email are two employees of CRC public relations, the right-wing extremist entity in Northern Virginia responsible for the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry when he was running for President.

Donziger recently released this statement and this press release explaining why he believes he cannot get a fair trial in Judge Kaplan’s courtroom.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals this week set May 28 as the date it will consider a petition by the Ecuadorians and Donziger that Judge Kaplan be taken off the case. The appellate court already unanimously reversed Judge Kaplan in 2012 when he tried to impose an illegal and unprecedented injunction purporting to block the Ecuadorians from enforcing their winning judgment in other countries – an injunction that brought scorn on the U.S. federal judiciary from academics and lawyers worldwide.